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Thursday, July 27, 2017

IMAGINATION

Audrey

Two little girls were playing in the yard. One was holding a tin can, stirring small pebbles in it with a stick. The other little girl asked her what she was stirring. She answered, "Beans." "Those aren't beans! They're rocks," said the other little girl. "Just use your imagination," answered Audrey, my oldest granddaughter.

She had a wonderful imagination as a child. While I don't think she was in need of "beans", she was probably manifesting other parts of her future with her delightful antics. Always eager to put on a "show" for the adults in her life, she often danced and acted out her favorite songs and videos of the day. I will never forget the time when she was about three years old. She picked up a small brass horn I had, and using it as her microphone, climbed to the middle of my bed, began jumping, and started singing "Ten Little Monkeys Jumping On a Bed".

Audrey is all grown up now, and working with EDF (Environmental Defense Fund) as a Habitat Exchange Program Specialist. She is also extremely talented as a musician and dancer. These are not her profession, but they still bring much joy into her life as she performs in an orchestra as well as enrolls in dance classes as time permits. I'll bet her tender heart also played a huge part in choosing her profession in environmental causes.

Imagination. What a wonderful tool to have if we know how to use it properly.

One night this week I heard Stephen Colbert interview an actress who has won two Tonys for her acting on Broadway. (Sorry, I don't remember her name.) What caught my attention was her answer when he asked her if she always expected to be a winner. She told him that when she was young, she aspired to performing on Broadway. At age 15, she would use her hairbrush as a microphone, stand in front of her mirror, and practice a speech thanking everyone for her Tony award.

A couple who attended Unity with me many years ago had married after

meeting at church and dating for awhile. The woman told me that she was envisioning the "love of her life" for quite some time before they met. She said she would dance alone in her living room, holding her arms up as if she were holding onto a partner. When they met, and when they shared their first romantic dance, she knew her vision had materialized. Sounds a little crazy, huh? Read on.

Someone very close to me.. my late sister Jean, did something similar when she was young. She told me that when she was unhappy, she would dress in something very lovely, pour Tab (a diet Coke at the time) into a champagne glass, and pretend she was sipping champagne, and waiting on her date with a man who would love her and shower her with all the good things she wanted out of life. And you know what? She realized that dream when she met and married her husband, Mike. They had a wonderful life together. Early on, he was so in love he asked her to make a list of everything material that she wanted out of life, and he promised to fulfill it. He did that and more. The list even included frivolous things like a mink coat. I don't know if she ever wore it. Mike never knew about her pretense of being well-off and in love with someone like him when she was younger. It took quite a few years for that to come about, but it did. Was it magic?

It is nearing the anniversary of my sister Jean's death, so stories and pictures of her keep coming to mind. This one is at what we always called The Barn - a structure my former husband built for us to live in temporarily while he built our permanent home on the same property. It was built with a package of lumber from Payless that they termed a barn. Little did I realize at the time that it would be my home for nearly 20-years, thirteen of those years I lived there alone with my little dogs and many cats to keep me company. During that time I often referred to it as my Walden Pond -- without the pond. Lots of happy memories of those years spent in The Barn.

The two-room Barn was filled comfortably with antiques, a wood-burning stove, and lots of furniture and family mementos collected through the years. The one thing it didn't have that I really wanted/needed was a real desk. I fashioned one out of a couple of two-drawer metal file cabinets (white - this is important) and the rectangular-shaped top to a card table (blue) I laid across them. This was positioned in the large back room of the Barn so that each time I walked to the door, I would glance over and look at it. I used this for several years, always thinking I needed a realdesk.

One day my son Matthew called and said, "Mom, how would you like a desk?" It seems the apartment manager where he lived was getting rid of furniture that had been left behind by tenants. There was a small desk, and Matthew brought it to me. As he got out of his car he told me I might not like the color, and he would take it back if I didn't. I knew immediately what it would look like. I said, "It's blue and white, isn't it?" He looked surprised. And, of course, that's what it was.

The small desk indeed had a blue top with two white drawers down one side. The only difference was my makeshift desk had two file drawers on each side. We both got a big laugh at this. I realized that my constant viewing of the old desk was accompanied by the thought, "I've got to get a new desk". The picture in my mind was very close to the manifested new desk. I told myself that I should have pictured a pretty antique oak desk!

By now, you might be familiar with the Law of Attraction that I am writing about. We've all heard the expression, "Be careful what you wish for." That's easy to do when we are consciously wanting certain things in our life -- a new car, perhaps a new home, or even a new baby or pet. However, it's the unconscious thoughts or wishes we must be careful to control. Especially our hateful or negative thoughts. If we are constantly thinking of things or people or experiences we do not like or want, the energy we put into those thoughts can, and often will, manifest those very things in our lives.

(Sometimes I believe it was the collective thinking of millions that got our current President elected. Maybe we should be concentrating on having someone new - and saner -- in the White House. All together now... )

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When my daughter Carajean's son, Tanner, was about 11-years old, his imagination took the form of homemade videos. As he showed a talent for it, his dad Branch took him one summer to a week-long seminar on the art and techniques of making videos. The ones that he created afterwards were so good that it was hard to believe someone that young could have made them. He cloned himself in many. Because I loved them, I often shared them with friends, and bragged on him.

Tanner just graduated from high school in May, and for a Senior English assignment, he and some of his cousins and friends made the following "film noir" of Shakespeare's classic "Hamlet". I was so impressed, I asked for permission to post it.

This was filmed in my daughter's home, and the cast of characters is as follows:

Ace Detective Prince Hammy - Jorden Hix

Polonius and referee- Tanner Archer

Claudius and Ophelia- Race Schaeffer

Horatio - Holden Archer

Gertrude - Jewel Goodfellow

Tanner wears the plaid hat and mustache very well! Oh, and by the way, it's not surprising that they made a grade of 100 on this project, is it?

Tanner will attend the University of Texas this fall. Even though he is very interested in the environmental sciences just like his older sister Audrey, I wouldn't be surprised if he is enticed by Austin's artistic, musical, and filmmakers' venues. (He is also a very talented cellist.) Who knows, maybe he will someday be another Al Gore, and make wonderful movies that will be instrumental in saving the environment as well.

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If you will look back over your own life, you might be surprised at the things that happened to or for you that were something you had desired or dreamed of at an earlier time. Tell me about them.

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BLAME?

"The link between "natural" disasters and our behavior is growing stronger -- from the effects of global warming on weather crises and the way that global starvation is a matter of unjust distribution to the loss of species due to the expansion of the human population -- we can see the finger of blame pointing at ourselves."— Sallie McFague in Life Abundant by Sallie McFague